As She Left It: A Novel

by Catriona McPherson

  It got rid of them, but it attracted the attention of two girls who looked familiar. They started clapping and came to sit beside her.

  “That’s told him, the scuzzo,” said one of them. “He thinks he’s God’s gift to the world.”

  “Which one?” Opal said.

  “Both,” said the other girl. “Jan and Paulo. Yann and Paaooouulo. I’d love to get into their HR files. I bet they’re called John and Paul, really.”

  “Or George and Ringo,” Opal said, kicking herself when the two girls started giggling. But she told herself it was fine. She would only see them at work, and she didn’t need to talk about anything she didn’t want to. But still she was jumpy. Pat and Charlotte were easy. Like Jill at the salon. They didn’t really ask you stuff. If they wanted to know something, they told you. “So Opal, I bet you’ve got a fella, pretty girl like you.” But with Kate and Rhianne, proper girlfriends, the same age, it was harder to keep things light, harder to stop the questions and get them to swallow the answers she could handle giving them. They were at it already.

  “Where did you go to school?”

  “Round here?”

  “Still at home?”

  “Or got your own place?”

  Opal couldn’t cope with both of them at once and ended up telling them about breaking up with Baz and leaving Whitby.

  “Is that why you were crying?”

  “We saw you, you know.”

  So in case they thought she was heartbroken over Baz and kept asking questions and she started crying again—it wasn’t that unlikely—she ended up telling them about her mum dying and moving back into her old house, and then she’d gone back to work five minutes early off her break to get away from them.

  They were at it again now.

  “Good weekend?”

  “Thought you were coming to Yates’s?”

  “We bagged three lads and were left with a spare one.”

  “Where were you?”

  Opal thought hard. “I went up to Northallerton with pals of mine, Billy and Tony. To a club. Claypole’s. Great night. Sorry.”

  “Billy and Tony with Ys?”

  “Where’s Northallerton?

  “Can we come next time if we find a third boy?”

  Opal said of course they could. It seemed to satisfy them and she could go back to thoughts of N Fossett again.

  After her shift, when she got to the right street, she could hardly believe she was in Leeds at all. High grey stone walls on both sides of a quiet road with trees almost meeting in the middle and every house with two sets of gateposts—one at one edge of the front garden and one at the other and a drive that was half a circle, so you could come in one side and out again without stopping. Opal wondered if lads in cars ever came up here and wove in and out for laughs on a Friday night but decided probably not, with it being so quiet and a dead end—just like Mote Street, except not really—and probably everyone in the houses was in Neighborhood Watch and would call the cops at the first rev of an engine.

  She walked up one side (2, 4, 6, 8) and down the other (7, 5, 3, 1) and stopped. Number 9 she was after. She turned and looked along the street again. You couldn’t even see the houses from here, set so far back behind the walls and trees like they were, but she counted the gateways and there were definitely eight of them.

  For another long moment she just stood there, thinking. False address? Or just a typo, maybe. And then she noticed that at the dead end of the road the black railings with more of those gnarled, enormous trees behind them weren’t railings at all, or not all the way across, anyway. There was a gate there too, taller than she was, twice as tall, and curved over at the top, with a lamp hanging in the middle, in a fancy black iron thing like a little birdcage, just above where one gate met the other. Opal walked back down the middle of the road—so quiet, just like Mote Street only without the Joshi boys—and peered through the railings.

  There wasn’t a drive as such, or even a path, but between the trees on one side and the trees on the other, between the big bushes with the stiff shiny leaves (that Opal thought might be azaleas although she couldn’t be sure because there were no flowers on them), there was a space that was just grass. Mounds of it, old stuff from last year bent over and looking like great big clods of hair fished out of a drain, and this year’s growth too, tall and stiff, more like reeds than grass really, with heads on it like corn. And there were spindly little trees as high as her shoulders that looked as if they might have just decided to grow there instead of someone planting them.

  Was there a house in there? Could there be? No one would put a gate in if it led to nothing. And if she squinted at the join between the maybe-azaleas and the drain hair, she thought she could see a line sweeping round and disappearing. She put her face right up between the railings and stared at the trees hiding where the line disappeared to. Nothing. The bushes were too thick and the dazzle of sun off the dead clumps of grass was too bright.

  Opal took hold of the handle on the black lock plate of the gate and rattled it. No chance there. She looked up, wondering if the railings were really too high to be scaled and that’s when she saw the design on the cage where the lantern still hung, broken and dusty. The iron hadn’t just been bent into fancy shapes for decoration like she’d thought, but into a number nine. Four number nines, one on each side of the lantern, that must have stood out against the light when it was on. She’d found N Fossett’s house. Now, did she have the nerve to clamber over these railings and knock on the door?

  She didn’t. And anyway, there must be another way in, from another street that Ned or Nicholas or Norbert—she laughed out loud when she thought of that last one—used every day. He couldn’t possibly hack his way through the undergrowth and unlock this rusty old gate when he needed a pint of milk and a paper. So she turned away, keeping her eye trained on the tallest of the gnarled old trees, hoping she would recognise it again if it popped up from another angle on the next road over.

  But it was confusing, these looping roads and walls and all the bushes, and Opal had lost her sense of direction by the time she’d gone round two corners. She couldn’t even find her way back to the dead end road and the iron gate now. She needed a street map, she decided. And so, hungry and hot, she turned for home—or crossed a road or two anyway, hoping she’d see something familiar if she kept walking.

  She was standing on a corner, wondering which way to go, when a little whispering voice behind her spoke so softly she had to turn to be sure it wasn’t just the wind in the trees.

  EIGHTEEN

  “EXCUSE ME?” THE LITTLE voice said. “Are you going to the party?”

  It was a tiny woman wearing slippers and an apron. She peered up at Opal from eyes that were pale blue and pink, almost no lashes, just a thickened rim, sore-looking, making her blink every second or two.

  “Eh?” said Opal, looking down at herself, at her strappy top and cotton pedal pushers—the coolest, lightest clothes she owned, washed out every night for the next morning, because jeans in this heat would have killed her. They weren’t scruffy, but they weren’t party clothes either.

  “I was at a party,” said the little woman. “But … ” she looked past Opal and shook her head. Her hair was short and straight, pure white, showing her scalp at the parting. “They’re supposed to come today, you see, but I was at a party and I must have missed them.”

  “Shouldn’t you be at home?” Opal said, looking down at the slippers.

  “Yes, but I missed them,” said the little woman, her voice climbing higher and beginning to sound wavery. “They always come today.”

  “Maybe you should wait for them at home,” Opal said.

  “Oh! Yes,” the woman said, clapping her hands as if Opal had had a brainwave, and she stepped down just as a car went sliding past, only twenty miles an hour, if that, but Opal clutched the woman’s arm as the horn blared and she dragged her—practically lifted her—back up onto the pavement again.

  “Sorry, sorry
,” the woman said in her whispery voice. Her pink eyes swam, making her blink even harder. She rubbed her arm through her blouse where Opal had grabbed.

  “Oh God,” said Opal. “I’m so sorry. Don’t tell me I hurt you.”

  “Sorry,” said the woman again, and she bowed her head as if Opal had threatened her.

  “Look,” Opal said. “How about if I walk home with you? And we’ll see if they’re there, waiting.” Without thinking, she had slipped back into that same old way of talking, learned early—agreeing, picking up on whatever she could and batting it back, whether she believed it or not.

  “Thank you,” said the little woman, slipping her hand through Opal’s arm, making Opal think of the way the smallest birds, blue-tits and finches, slipped into the holes in the nest boxes in Steph’s back garden.

  “Which way?” Opal said, but the little woman hesitated, humming a bit under her breath and looking up at Opal, blinking.

  “My house,” she said. “Home.”

  Fantastic, thought Opal, and they set off along the nearest side street. “Is it this way?” she said. “Does this look familiar? Are these your neighbors? Who lives here?” And she kept it up, coaxing and pecking, while the little woman trotted along at her side, thanking her, asking if they were too late, if they’d have missed them, that little hand resting soft and light in the crook of Opal’s elbow until at last she stopped and let out a cry.

  “My house,” she said, pointing up a lane towards a row of garages behind the street they were standing on. “But … ” she blinked at Opal. “I wanted to go to the party. Are you going to the party?”

  “Why don’t we go to your house?” Opal said. “See if anyone’s there.” The woman’s little face crumpled, and she put one of her hands up to cover her mouth.

  “They come today,” she said. “I’m supposed to be there for them.”

  “Best hurry then,” Opal said, and together they trotted up the ash lane, past the lockups, and into a garden gate. Behind it was a kind of covered tunnel with vinyl walls and a cloudy vinyl roof to match, covered in moss and dead leaves; the little woman bustled along it like a white mouse in one of those puzzle runs. Must be a care home, Opal thought, following her, planning to give the staff a good slice of her mind, but when the woman trotted up the five steps to the door at the end of the passageway and opened it, disappearing inside, and Opal followed her, it wasn’t an institution of any kind—that was clear.

  They were standing in a kitchen, quite small and very dark from the fact that the tunnel outside covered over the only window, but it wasn’t that that made Opal shiver. It was the smell of food going off in warm air. All over the little table that took up most of the floor were polystyrene trays of food—stew and soup and mash-potato-topped pies—and plastic tubs of boiled vegetables and wilting salad, the sliced raw onion reeking. Opal looked away.

  All around the walls there were fitted cupboards, not like ordinary kitchen cupboards with a worktop and a row of cabinets above, but floor to ceiling with drawers and doors, some of them so high you’d have to stand on a chair to reach them, and all painted with blue gloss except for their matching shiny black handles. But what grabbed her attention wasn’t the cupboards themselves but the signs all over them; clipboards with tick sheets and pieces of paper pinned on cork strips with thumbtacks. Do not take more than one meal out of the fridge one of them said in thick black letters. Lock the door was another. And then the one that Opal was really glad to see: In an emergency, call Shelley and a local phone number.

  “I’m going to call Shelley,” Opal said. “You sit down.”

  “They’re not here,” said the woman, but she sat and waited, no sign of her making another break for the door.

  “Hi,” said Opal into her phone. “Is that—Can I speak to Shelley? Oh, hi, yeah. Listen, I just found this little old lady wandering about and brought her home, and it says on the wall—”

  The woman on the other end of the phone made a sound halfway between a groan and a sigh.

  “Not again,” she said. “Home to your house? Or home to hers?”

  “We’re at hers,” said Opal. “But, like, she just let me walk right in, and I don’t think I should leave her here.”

  “Beggars belief, doesn’t it?” the woman said. “I’ll be there in two ticks, if you can just hang on.”

  “Shelley’s coming,” Opal said, hanging up, and the little woman’s eyes lit up into sparkles.

  “She might take me back to the party.”

  “She might well do,” said Opal. She was snapping the lids back onto the polystyrene trays, wondering whether to put them in the bin and let the little woman starve or put them back in the fridge and poison her, when the back door opened.

  “Shelley!”

  “Hell-o!” She was a young-ish woman, thirties maybe, dressed in that rich-mum uniform of linen trousers and a floaty top cut to hide the baby spread around her middle. She shook her head and rolled her eyes at Opal. Then, seeing the tubs and trays, she groaned again like she had over the phone. “Don’t tell me!” she said and turned to where the little woman sat with her hands clasped between her knees, slippered feet swinging. “How many times, Miss Muffett? Hmm? Did you take everything out again?”

  “To give them when they come,” the woman said.

  “They don’t come on a Monday now.” Shelley turned back to Opal. “They used to come every afternoon and now they come three full days. They say it’s better, but she can’t … ”

  “I missed them when I was at the party.”

  “It wasn’t a party,” Shelley said to Opal, dropping her voice. “I was taking my little girl and her friend to their ballet class and I made some sandwiches.” She rolled her eyes again, but Opal couldn’t help thinking that it wouldn’t be that bad, thinking life was a party just because two toddlers put tutus on and gave you a sarnie.

  “Does she live on her own?” Opal said in the same quiet voice Shelley had used to her.

  “Beggars belief,” she said again. “I mean you could have—” She stopped and flushed a little.

  “No, yeah, you’re right,” Opal said. “I could have been anyone.”

  “She’s got a niece,” said Shelley. “And two greats—not sure if they’re girls or boys—and doesn’t that say it all?”

  “One of each. A girl and a boy,” the little woman said. “And my nephew.”

  “I didn’t know you had a nephew.”

  “A niece and nephew and a great-niece and a great-nephew.”

  “And where does he live?”

  “Here,” said the woman. “Leeds.”

  “Really?” said Shelley. “Well, he could at least—” Again she stopped. The little woman had bowed her head again at the change of tone.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Come on, Norah, my love,” said Shelley, taking both her soft little hands and pulling her to her feet. “Let’s go and put your tape on. She’s got a video of Billy Smart’s circus. Watches it every day. That and a Trooping the Colour parade, until she wore the tape out.”

  They disappeared through the kitchen door and Opal stood staring at it as it swung shut behind them, listening to the footsteps growing fainter and fainter. Norah. Was it possible? But that Shelley had called her Miss … Opal scrabbled to remember and then laughed when she did. Miss Muffett, because of the way she was sitting there with her hands together and her feet swinging. But that couldn’t really be her name. Was it possible? She stepped to the kitchen door and, opening it a crack, peered along the passageway beyond.

  It had to be fifty feet long, door after door on either side, and the ceiling so high it felt like being in church or something when Opal stepped softly along the length of it. Church because it was dark too, and dusty, but at the end light dazzled down and the motes danced and—was that a pulpit?

  It wasn’t. It was just the fancy bottom of the stairs before they turned and started for real. Opal couldn’t see out of the front door, stained glass o
nto the vestibule and frosted glass beyond, so she went up the first few stairs to peer through the fanlight, and it was right enough. This was N Fossett’s house. There couldn’t be two drives choked like that with the bushes grown up like Sleeping Beauty’s vines.

  She dropped back down from her tiptoes and that was when she saw Shelley, standing at the bottom looking up at her.

  “Big house, eh?” she said. She tried to sound innocent, but Shelley’s face had gone wooden. “Why would a single woman buy a house this size?”

  “She didn’t,” said Shelley. “She was born here. Where were you going?”

  “Wow,” Opal said, her thoughts tumbling. How old was she? When did they stop teaching kids that loopy writing?

  “Were you needing to find the loo?”

  “Nah, just nosey,” Opal said skipping down the stairs and landing with a jump on the thin carpet. “Must be nice, living in the lap of luxury like this. It would do me.”

  Shelley said nothing.

  “Tell Miss Fossett I said bye,” Opal called over her shoulder. As she let herself out and went back along the weird tunnel to the gate, she punched the air and shouted “Yes!” making a long fierce hissing sound. Miss N Fossett, who had to know who the little bed girl was and who might even be her! Locked and loaded!

  “Hey!”

  It was Shelley, standing at the back door. Opal turned.

  “What are you so happy about?” Her face was just as wooden and her eyes were narrow too.

  “Good deed for the day,” Opal said. “Little old lady home safe and sound.”

  “That’s what you said when you called me,” said Shelley. “A little old lady.” She was walking towards Opal, slow and steady. “But, just then, when you were saying goodbye, you used her name. Miss Fossett.”

  “Yeah?” said Opal. “So?”

  “How did you find out her name? Were you snooping? Upstairs?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said Opal. “You got me. I got into her house but before I went snooping round I called up a neighbor so I could get caught red-handed.”